Suicide? "Most?"

Have there been suicide bombings by anyone other than Muslims at all? Maybe there have been and I missed the news, but I'm inclined to think not.

It is safe to say that all Islamists are Muslims, but not all Muslims are Islamists. What we fight here is not a religion it is an Ideology wearing religious garb. Fascism wrapped itself in Christianity (in the early Hitler years) sounding themes - but the goal was nationalist untopia. Communism wrapped itself in the "prophetical" writings of Marx (who would have been appalled at what Russian became), but it was the ideology of utopia that was the goal.

I agree with your sentiment, but we cannot confuse the religion with the ideology.

The problem I have is the lack of outcry by the religious. I don't know (meaning I don't know) whether I feel they are blindsided or complicit.

It has been alleged that suicide bombing was invented by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (the Tamil Tigers) operating in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). I haven't looked it up, but my recollection is that this group is credited with about 60 suicide bombing attacks over the years. They are not Muslims.

That's great, Alvar. I'll bet you found that kernel of knowledge at www.uselessfuckinginformation.com

Duhhh!!

Did You Know...
Most perpetrators of racism, xenophobia and perversion have been Republicans?

Okay, we found one exception (thank you, Alvar, for being dilligent). Seems to prove the rule. But I'm less concerned with the invention of the tactic than I am with its current employment. Cain may have invented murder, but I'm more concerned about who is practicing it now.

Yes, we war against an ideology, not a religion per se. But what drives the ideology? The religion.

Sure, Wahabiism (sp?) is merely a sect of Islam. But it is a sect of Islam.

Absolutely, there are external social, economic and political forces that fuel the anger of Muslims, particularly of the Middle East. But what force has kept the Muslim world a social, economic and political Medieval, feudal backwater at the dawn of the 21st Century and necesitated western paternalism? Islam.

Comparisons to the Nazi party twisting the teachings of Christianity to manipulate the populace and justify its own hatred are not analogous: where Christianity must be distorted to make it seem to serve such ends, Islam requires no such perversion: it clearly calls for violence against others, especailly Jews and Christians, who oppose Islam. This view (Wahabiism is a highjacking of a peaceful religion) is not surprising: many still suffer from the delusion that all religions are morally equivalent. They are not. The Aztecs cut out the beating hearts of captured enemies. Hindus, in their fatalistic determinism, allow millions to suffer in their midst in the name of karma. And Islam explicitly tells its adherents to lie in wait for Christians and Jews and "kill them at every opportunity."

Please get over the PR that Islam is a religion of peace. Mohammad was an agressive military leader who banished and slew those who resisted his new religion, and sold their wives and children into slavery (notably Jews). And this is not an ancient abberation: Mohammad established the practice, and Muslims are still killing Christians and blacks in the Sudan and selling them into slavery. The Qu'ran calls for their subjugation. Moderates and liberals now thankfully read their scriptures a bit more figuratively, and reject the military expressions of jihad, and so are no threat to us. But the Wahabi interprets his scriptures more literally, and so picks up Mohammad's bloody sword. And there are enough of them to cause the West real trouble.

Wahabiism is a fundamental, literal reading and practice of the words of "the prophet" Mohammad. Wahabiism is radical because the Qu'ran itself espouses radicalism. The only way to avoid its (the Qu'ran's) radicalism is to ignore much of what it says, as other Muslim sects do.

Thank God (not Allah) for these conciliatory, liberal (divorced a bit from what the Qu'ran really says) voices. They may have a galvanizing effect among the populace to reject the bloodletting of their zealous brother Muslims.

This in itself will not crush terrorism, but it will slow the defection of young men into the arms of bin Laden and his epigones, melt the ice of suspicion of Western involvement, and allow widening influx of modernization and personal freedom; this will improve peoples lives, give them a real hope and future, quench anger at the West and sooth the shame of their condition. There is a good chance many on the fence will beat their swords into plowshares. But the struggle against the purer, radical Islam will continue for many years.

So long as Radical clerics incite their people we will have the violence. Literate Muslims who are able to read the Quran find more verses for peace while the radicals use the verses supporting violence. More literacy is needed. As in the Christian church, priests interpretation was believed or misconstrued because people did not have a Bible and depended wholly on the clerics interpretation.

To say that all of these heinous atrocities were committed by Muslims is merely to make a demographic identification.

Far more important it is to recognize that they were committed by fanatics utterly committed to the worldwide imposition of an ideology the terrorists themselves define as Islamic.

I think that's the telling point, and I do not think that it is uselessf**inginformation.